Won't somebody please think of the old people?

Recommended safe limits for drinking alcohol by older people should be drastically cut, according to a report.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists says people over 65 should drink a maximum of only 1.5 units of alcohol a day.

That is the equivalent of just over about half a pint of beer or a small glass of wine.

How softly we creep towards zero. It won't be long before there is 'no safe level' for anyone and the temperance lobby can really get to work.

It warns current advice - 14 units of alcohol for women and 21 for men each week - is based on work with young adults.

I believe this to be a lie. According to one who was there, the guidelines—now rebranded 'safe limits'—were "not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee." If any evidence has appeared in the years since to make the guidelines anything other than an "intelligent guess", the RCP has not publicised it. I have never heard the claim that the limits were devised only with young adults in mind, and it's not as if they haven't had enough media coverage over the years to mention this little fact.

But even if you accept that the guidelines are not pure fantasy—in which case you may be drunk yourself—they were weekly guidelines, not daily 'safe limits'. A weekly guideline cannot be cut up into seven chunks and still carry the same risk. If you do that, you'll end up making preposterous statements like "drinking more than half a pint of a beer in a day puts old people's lives at risk." That is so plainly untrue that no old person is going to take the Royal of College of Physicians seriously. Welcome aboard, oldies.

The report says a third those who experience problems with alcohol abuse do so later on in life, often as a result of big changes like retirement, bereavement or feelings of boredom, loneliness and depression.

Well, you know what? If that's their situation, let them have a bloody drink, you miserable temperance swine. There is no public interest being served by having elderly people face loneliness and depression in a state of total sobriety. It really is—and I can't say this often enough—none of your business.

The editor of Saga magazine, Emma Soames, described the recommendations as "unbelievable".

"I think people will be infuriated by this. It's described as a public health problem, it's actually a private health matter."

Abso-fricking-lutely. It takes a descendent of Winston Churchill to tell it like it is. 'Public health' is a grossly misused term that is almost exclusively applied to private health. The infectious diseases have all but disappeared in Britain. Water and air is clean. Food is safe and labelled. At a time when we need a public health movement the least, the largest and much well-funded public health movement in history emerges.

There are, let's face it, only two things that are likely to cause poor health: bad luck and bad habits. You can't do anything about the first and the second is entirely a matter for the individual. Those who interfere in private behaviour do not deserve to be described as part of a public health movement. Call them anything you like—busybodies, wowsers, puritans, zealots, neo-prohibitionists—but don't go along with the charade that the private is public.

The key to getting really old is to have a routine - when they interview these really old people, they always say "I take the dog for a walk every day" or "I go bell ringing every day" or "I have a nice glass of brandy after every meal" or "I started smoking when I was 14 and I've never given up" or whatever.

How do you plan to spend your retirement .... before answering bear in mind that however much or however little you have responsibly contributed in the many years between leaving education and arriving at retirement, regardless of what work or service you might have provided, whether you served your country directly as a member of the armed forces or the emergency services or in some other public capacity, or simply did the old nine to five and paid your taxes, and your bills on time, and might have raised a family and might have for some time been "a grandparent" - often referred to as an indispensable role model and support for the generation below the generation below you - despite all that you are, in the eyes of some, and increasingly in more such eyes, still a child that needs hectoring and bullying and controlling - sometimes at the behest of bodies that claim to have set themselves up to guard your interests, all for your own good of course ... so do factor in the requirement to set aside one day a week in order to present yourself in front of your GP for the mandatory weekly drug and alcohol screening programme and the other one day a week to be spent at "mandatory personal health re-education classes" before finalising your plans ...

Mark's point about having a routine keeping you going is a very good one. As I said on my blog, "In the last years of his life, my late father (who lived to 91) would have one pint or bottle or can before his lunch, and one small whisky or sherry before his tea, and that was it. But even that would have been 3 or 4 units a day."

About Me

Writer and researcher at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Blogging in a personal capacity.
Author of Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism (2015), The Art of Suppression (2011), The Spirit Level Delusion (2010) and Velvet Glove, Iron Fist (2009).

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."